Yearly Archives: 2007

INDIAN ENGLISH LITERATURE: IN
SEARCH OF A NAME
S.SUBRAHMANYA SARMA
When one thinks of Indian English Literature, one cannot but think of the
complexity and difficulty in choosing a name for it. The following names been given
with different interpretations suggesting different nuances and shades of meaning.
1. Anglo-Indian Literature
2. Indo-Anglian Literature
3. Indo-English Literature
4. Indian writing in English
5. Indian-English writing
6. Indian English Literature
It’s true that the literary nomenclatures are never fully resolved to the best
satisfaction of all. To start with it was referred to as an Anglo-Indian Literature (to
think of Edward Farley Oaten’s prize-winning essay with that title) and it covered the
writings of Englishmen in Indian on Indian themes but the word Anglo-Indian also
refers to a race, a microscopic minority in India and it somehow acquired a
pejorative dimension. But the Indian creative writing in English needs to be referred
by a name. The phrase Indian Literature, on the analogy of American Literature or
Australian Literature is not suitable here, for in America and in Australia, English is
the only language (may be with different dialects or creolized English as it happens
to be in the case of Black-American Literature) and the spoken medium of people.
But in India the case is different. Indian Literature would mean, any literature in any
Indian language, hence the difficulty.
It’s said that J.H.Cousins coined the term Indo-Anglian literature in 1883 and
later it was given currency by Sreenivasa Iyengar, the pioneer in this field. But
Iyengar himself feels that the phrase ‘Indo-Anglian’ is not much too happy an
expression and this phrase was used by him as a title for his handbook on Indian
writing in English, brought out by PEN- (All India Centre).
In this book he makes a reference to the phrase ‘Indo-Anglian’ and how it
was misprinted as Indo-Anglican by mistake and how he had to send an answer
when he was chastised for this odd expression by ‘Autolycus’. He feels that people
prefer ‘Indo-English’ to ‘Indo-Anglian’, though ‘Indo-Anglian’ can be used both as an
adjective and substantive. Referring to this body of literature he recalls Bottemley’s
phrase ‘Matthew Arnold in Sari’ – not so an appalling apparition, perhaps after the
passage of 150 or more years. Iyengar likens this body of literature to legendary
Sakuntala who was disowned by her parents and feels that it is a tributory and an
off-shoot of English Literature which he refers to as a new mutation.
The more surprising thing is two distinct streams flow together
simultaneously; one, the other Indian language classical works getting translated
into English and the other creative works in English. V.K.Gokak prefers the phrase
Indo-English to refer to the former work and the latter is termed as Indo-Anglian.
Surjit Mukherjee in his essay ‘Indo-English Literature’ refers to works like
‘Geetanjalai’ (works translated by the authors themselves into English) not merely as
translations and like to call them as trans-creations. Referring to ‘Geetanjali’ he says,
“Its unique quality was the result of the author endeavouring to be his own
translator, in which process, he went beyond the bounds of translations and achieved
something which may be called ‘trans-creation’”.[1] And he refuses to categorize
‘Geetanjali’ under either Indo-English or Indo-Anglian. For that matter any creative
work is a trans-creation, for, that in the sub-conscious is brought out as creation. It’s
a creative transformation.
It’s understandable that a distinction is kept between these two types of
translations;- one ,a work put into English by others, (other than the author) two, a
work translated into English by the author himself. The former is considered under
Indo-English writing and the latter is considered under Indo-Anglian or Indian English
Literature (a phrase coined by Dr.M.K.Naik for his critical survey of this body of
literature and accepted by Sahitya Akademi and \gained currency now for the simple
reason that it scores over other names, for it can widely cover the entire body of
Indian creative writing in English).
Amarjit Singh feels that “The appellation ‘Indo-English’ or even the less
felicitous ‘Indo-Anglian’ suggests only a part of the difficulty in trying to place the
literature produced by Indians in English within clear, national, regional or linguistic
boundaries.”[2]
Mulk Raj Anand – himself an established writer- prefers the phrase ‘Indian-
English writing’ and says,” I feel that Indian-English writing has come to stay as part
of world-literature”. [3] But somehow the phrase Indian-English has not yet coughed
off its pejorative colouring. Also Indian-English cannot be considered as pidgin-
English, for it is nothing short of degradation, for Indian-English is almost on par
with English barring a few irregularities in speech, nor can it be considered as
creolized English as seen in some parts of the world.
In this connection, the remarks of M.K.Naik are quite appropriate. Referring
to the origins he says “Indian English Literature began as an interesting by-product
of an eventful encounter in the eighteenth century between a vigorous and
enterprising Britain and a stagnant and chaotic India”.[4] Later, almost coining a
phrase , he explains it thus: “The Sahitya Akademi has recently accepted ‘Indian
English Literature’ as the most suitable appellation for this body of writing. The term
emphasizes two significant ideas: first, that this literature constitutes one of the
many streams that join the great ocean called Indian Literature, which though
written in different languages, has an unmistakable unity; and secondly that it is an
inevitable product of the nativization of the English Literature appears to be more
acceptable than the other phrases discussed earlier.
Indian-English Literature has acquired a new identity as much identity as
American and Austrian literature have acquired which of course is quite distinct from
Indian English. The efforts by writers like Raja Rao in Indianizing English language
cannot be ignored though it is very difficult to express the Indian sensibility in
English. I am reminded of my own remarks in this connection: “to clothe the very
Indianness in English tongue – though it has gone into the very system of our life –
without making it appear bizarre is yet another difficulty for the cloth which
sometimes is either too long or too short which makes one prefer the naked majesty
itself. A rapprochement is somehow wrought between Indianness and the English
tongue and sometimes vice verse”.[6]
People feel that Indian writing English at the moment is more an illusion
than of reality and more a promise and less an achievement. It’s too early to pass
such a judgment. While dealing with this mass of literature, the Carlylean approach
of dealing with the literary biography as a first-phase in tracing literary history is
needed but it is not all, for “Indian writing English produced over the last hundred
odd years does not reveal a homogenous continuity, but rather a critical cyclical
continuity .”[7]
The role of a literary historian in tracing this great unwieldy mass of Indian
English Literature is a no mean task. The early writers and their immediate
demandings followed by the next successive phases and writers before and after
Independence present a much too complex picture to analyse. The pioneering efforts
of Sreenivasa Iyengar followed by the pursuing efforts of professors like M.K.Naik
and C.D. Narasimhaiah in this direction, deserve not only complaints but even
commendation.
REFERENCES
1. Surjit Mukherjee,”Indo-English Literature”- CRITICAL ESSAYS ON INDIAN
WRITING IN ENGLISH, (eds) M.K.Naik et. al, (Macmillan –Madras-1977),p.21.
2. Amarjit Singh, “Contemporary Indo English Literature – An approach”,
ASPECTS OF INDIAN WRITING ENGLISH (ed.) M.K.Naik,(Macmillan-1987)p.3
3. Mulk Raj Anand, “Pigeon-Indian- some notes on Indian-English writing”-
ASPECTS OF INDIAN WRITING IN ENGLISH, (ed) M.K.Naik (Macmillan –
1979);p.44.
4. M.K.Naik, A HISTORY OF INDIAN ENGLISH LITERATURE .(Sahitya Akademi
1982),p.1
5. Ibid., p.5.
6. S.Subrahmanya Sarma, ”Foreword” ETERNAL CREATIONS (Amar publications,
Madras, 1982) p.v
7. D.V.K.Raghavacharyulu, “The Task Ahead”, CRITICAL ESSAYS ON INDIAN
WRITING IN ENGLISH (eds) M.K.Naik et.al (Macmillan-Madras 1977)-p.33.
Prof. Dr. Subrahmanyam S Sarma
Head – Department of English
Nizwa College of Technology, Nizwa
Sultanate of Oman
Post Box-No-358 – Postal Code-611

understanding than the “American” whom the reader met at the beginning.

**

We have now examined, through the openings of these four novels, a cross-section of the

linguistic and sociolinguistic characteristics of Indian Writing in English and the translation

problems that may arise. Our corpus has of course been small, certainly too small to allow us

to extrapolate any generalisations about, say, the diachronic evolution of Indian English or

any inherent differences between men’s and women’s writing (important though such

perspectives of course are). What we have come some way towards establishing through this

work is the essential, indeed the defining hybridity of Indian English. If there are two

challenges that permanently face the translator of IWE works into any non-Indian language,

they are, on the one hand, the presence of lexical Indianisms, embedded in the text, and the

need to find appropriate translation strategies to communicate their sense and flavour; and, on

the other, the strong tendency of IWE texts to deploy to the full the idiomatic resources of

International English, with a marked continuing influence of British English, a characteristic

which forces the translator to decide how far each such idiom should or should not go into a

similar register in the target language. Today, translation of Indian Writing in English, for all

its challenges and difficulties, has a major role to play in communicating, to as wide an

audience as possible, the richness and complexity of Indian culture, in an ever-more

globalised world to which that culture will have a remarkable contribution to make as the

twenty-first century unfolds.

1 McCutchion, Indian Writing in English, 10.

2 McCutchion, Indian Writing in English, 15.

3 McCutchion, Indian Writing in English, 16.

4 Sales Salvador, “Translational Passages”, 1, 2.

5 Sales Salvador, “Translational Passages”, 6.

6 Sales Salvador, “Translational Passages”, 3.

7 Sales Salvador, “Translational Passages”, 7.

8 Lal, Writers Workshop, 1.

9 Lal, Writers Workshop, 101.

10 McCutchion, Indian Writing in English, 27.

11 Sales Salvador, “Beyond the Western Paradigm”, 12.

12 Sales Salvador, “Beyond the Western Paradigm”, 17, 16.

13 Pradhan, ‘stylistics of Fiction”, 93, 97.

14 Pradhan, ‘stylistics of Fiction”, 97.

15 The works which Sarangi discusses by Narayan (The Guide), Desai (Clear Light of Day and Fasting, Feasting) and Ghosh (The Shadow Lines and The Calcutta Chromosome) are different from those analysed in the

present paper.

16 Sarangi, Indian Novels in English, 17.

17 Sarangi, Indian Novels in English, 18.

18 Sarangi, Indian Novels in English, 19.

19 I have written on Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide from a literary-critical viewpoint elsewhere: see Rollason,

“”In Our Translated World””.

20 Rushdie, “Hobson-Jobson“, 81.

21 Narayan, The Painter of Signs, 18. The classic work by Valluvar (or Thiruvalluvar), Kural or Tirukkural

(‘sacred Couplets”), has, however, been translated into English: the Penguin Companion to Literature (which,

incidentally, dates it not in the tenth century but in the third or fourth century CE) mentions (4: 324) three such

translations as being in existence in 1962, the year in which Narayan set his novel. It is therefore at least possible

that Raman might be accessing his own cultural heritage through English.

13

22 “What’s he to Hecuba or Hecuba to him?” (Narayan, The Painter of Signs, 105). This is actually a slight

misquotation of Hamlet II.2, 561: “What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba?”

23 Narayan, The Painter of Signs, 105.

24 Narayan, The Painter of Signs, 7-15.

25 Narayan, The Painter of Signs, 10.

26 Narayan, The Painter of Signs, 12.

27 Narayan, The Painter of Signs, 7.

28 Narayan, The Painter of Signs, 7.

29 As Chennai was then called.

30 Narayan, The Painter of Signs, 8, 9.

31 Narayan, The Painter of Signs, 8, 9.

32 Narayan, The Painter of Signs, 10.

33 For the non-Indian reader, idlis are typically south Indian rice cakes.

34 Narayan, The Painter of Signs, 11.

35 Narayan, The Painter of Signs, 12.

36 Narayan, The Painter of Signs, 13.

37 Narayan, The Painter of Signs, 14-15.

38 Yule and Burrell, Hobson-Jobson, 519-520.

39 Desai, In Custody, 1-11.

40 Desai, In Custody, 53.

41 Desai, In Custody, 1.

42 Yule and Burrell, Hobson-Jobson, 89.

43 Desai, In Custody, 5. Later in the novel Pant, the (real) award-winning contemporary Hindi poet, is denigrated

by Nur (53).

44 This is made explicit on p. 8: “Hindi was what he taught at the college”.

The Top Ten Indian Writers in English
chillibreeze writer — KAUSHIKI SANYAL

Salman Rushdie
The 1980s and 90s saw a renaissance of Indian writing in English making the task of choosing the top ten authors of this genre especially challenging. The renaissance was spearheaded by Salman Rushdie with his path breaking novel Midnight’s Children in 1980. Ever since his success, there has been a glut of Indian authors writing in English. These contemporary writers are not confined to people living in India, but like Rushdie, a large number of them are part of the Indian diaspora. Earlier writers like Nirad C. Choudhuri, R.K. Narayan, Mulk Raj Anand or Raja Rao used English in its classical form. However, Rushdie, with his Pidgin English, signaled a new trend in writing as well as giving voice to multicultural concerns. Although his Midnight’s Children, Shame, The Moor’s Last Sigh, Fury, and Shalimar the Clown received critical acclaim for their themes as well as his use of magic realism, the book that generated the most controversy was The Satanic Verses. He was accused of blasphemy by many Muslims because of certain allegedly irreverent references to Islam’s Prophet Mohammad. A fatwa was issued by Iran’s Ayotollah Khomeini in 1989 calling for the execution of the author. Many countries banned the book including India. Rushdie had to go into hiding in U.K. Till date, Rushdie remains a hunted man with a price on his head.

Vikram Seth
Next on the list should be Vikram Seth who produced some magnificent works like The Golden Gate, A Suitable Boy, An Equal Music, and Two Lives. His first book is written in verse form and chronicles the lives of young professionals in San Francisco. But the work that propelled him into the limelight was his second book, A Suitable Boy, which was based in a post-independent India.

Arundhati Roy
If Rushdie’s work liberated Indian writing from the colonial straitjacket, Arundhati’s Roy’s book, The God of Small Things, radically changed perceptions about Indian authors with her commercial success. She won the Booker prize and remained on the top of the New York Times bestseller list for a long time. With her also started the trend of large advances, hitherto unheard of among Indian writers.

Rohinton Mistry
The other authors who should be included in the list are: Rohinton Mistry, V.S. Naipaul, Amitav Ghosh, Jhumpa Lahiri, Shashi Tharoor, and Upamanyu Chatterjee. Mistry’s books shed light on the issues affecting the Parsi community in India. Although the novels are long and at times depressing, the beauty of the books lies in their lyrical prose. Some of his better known works include Such a Long Journey, Family Matters, and A Fine Balance.

V.S Naipaul
One of the most enduring figures in the field and a nobel laureate, V.S. Naipaul, is of Indian origin although he was born in Trinidad. His prolific writing career includes works such as A House for Mr. Biswas, India: A Wounded Civilization, An Area of Darkness, India: A Million Mutinies Now, and A Bend in the River. Naipaul is another writer who has courted controversy for a long time. His often scathing commentaries on developing countries like India or the Caribbean and his critical assessment of Muslim fundamentalism on non-Arab countries have been subjected to harsh criticism.

Amitav Ghosh
Another respected name that should feature on a list of the top ten contemporary Indian writers is Amitav Ghosh, who has won many accolades including the Sahitya Akademi Award and the Prix Medicis Etrangere of France. Although less prone to controversy, he is responsible for producing some of the most lyrical and insightful works on the effect of colonialism on the native people. His books include The Circle of Reason, The Glass Palace, The Calcutta Chromosome, and The Hungry Tide.

Jhumpa Lahiri
Jhumpa Lahiri, a recent entrant into the world of Indian writers, tackles the much-debated topic of cultural identity of Indians in a far off land. Lahiri took the literary world by storm when her debut book, The Interpreter of Maladies, won the prestigious Pulitzer Prize in 2000. The Namesake, her first novel, is an ambitious attempt to chart the lives of a family of immigrants through the eyes of a young boy. Both her books have received brickbats as well as accolades but she deserves a mention for tackling a subject long ignored by other Indian writers.

Shashi Tharoor
The list would be incomplete without a mention of Shashi Tharoor’s satirical works like The Great Indian Novel and Show Business. His latest book, India: From Midnight to Millennium, is a non-fiction chronicle of India’s past and its projected future.

Upamanyu Chatterjee
Lastly, Upamanyu Chatterjee deserves a mention as he was one of the first Indian authors who found success outside of India with his 1988 debut novel, English, August. His wry sense of humor and realistic portrayal of India has given us the witty and amusing, The Mammaries of the Welfare State. However, he hasn’t been able to replicate the success of his debut novel with his later works, especially in the West.

Chillibreeze’s disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not reflect the views of Chillibreeze as a company. Chillibreeze has a strict anti-plagiarism policy. Please contact us to report any copyright issues related to this article.

Indian English Literature (IEL) refers to the body of work by writers in India who write in the English language and whose native or co-native language could be one of the numerous languages of India. It is also associated with the works of members of the Indian diaspora, especially people like Salman Rushdie who was born in India. It is frequently referred to as Indo-Anglian literature. (Indo-Anglian is a specific term in the sole context of writing that should not be confused with the term Anglo-Indian). As a category, this production comes under the broader realm of postcolonial literature– the production from previously colonised countries such as India.

IEL has a relatively recent history, it is only one and a half centuries old. The first book written by an Indian in English was by Sake Dean Mahomet, titled Travels of Dean Mahomet; Mahomet’s travel narrative was published in 1793 in England. In its early stages it was influenced by the Western art form of the novel. Early Indian writers used English unadulterated by Indian words to convey an experience which was essentially Indian. Raja Rao‘s Kanthapura is Indian in terms of its storytelling qualities. Rabindranath Tagore wrote in Bengali and English and was responsible for the translations of his own work into English. Dhan Gopal Mukerji was the first Indian author to win a literary award in the United States. Nirad C. Chaudhuri, a writer of non-fiction, is best known for his The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian where he relates his life experiences and influences. P. Lal, a poet, translator, publisher and essayist, founded a press in the 1950’s for Indian English writing, Writers Workshop.

R.K. Narayan is a writer who contributed over many decades and who continued to write till his death recently. He was discovered by Graham Greene in the sense that the latter helped him find a publisher in England. Graham Greene and Narayan remained close friends till the end. Similar to Thomas Hardy‘s Wessex, Narayan created the fictitious town of Malgudi where he set his novels. Some criticise Narayan for the parochial, detached and closed world that he created in the face of the changing conditions in India at the times in which the stories are set. Others, such as Graham Greene, however, feel that through Malgudi they could vividly understand the Indian experience. Narayan’s evocation of small town life and its experiences through the eyes of the endearing child protagonist Swaminathan in Swami and Friends is a good sample of his writing style. Simultaneous with Narayan’s pastoral idylls, a very different writer, Mulk Raj Anand, was similarly gaining recognition for his writing set in rural India; but his stories were harsher, and engaged, sometimes brutally, with divisions of caste, class and religion.

Contents

Among the later writers, the most notable is Salman Rushdie, born in India, now living in the United Kingdom. Rushdie with his famous work Midnight’s Children (Booker Prize 1981, Booker of Bookers 1992) ushered in a new trend of writing. He used a hybrid language – English generously peppered with Indian terms – to convey a theme that could be seen as representing the vast canvas of India. He is usually categorised under the magic realism mode of writing most famously associated with Gabriel García Márquez.

Bharati Mukherjee, author of Jasmine (1989), has spent much of her career exploring issues involving immigration and identity with a particular focus upon the United States and Canada.

Vikram Seth, author of A Suitable Boy (1994) is a writer who uses a purer English and more realistic themes. Being a self-confessed fan of Jane Austen, his attention is on the story, its details and its twists and turns.

Shashi Tharoor, in his The Great Indian Novel (1989), follows a story-telling (though in a satirical) mode as in the Mahabharata drawing his ideas by going back and forth in time. His work as UN official living outside India has given him a vantage point that helps construct an objective Indianness.

It would be useful at this point to bring in the recent debates on Indian Writing in English (“IWE”).

One of the key issues raised in this context is the superiority/inferiority of IWE as opposed to the literary production in the various languages of India. Key polar concepts bandied in this context are superficial/authentic, imitative/creative, shallow/deep, critical/uncritical, elitist/parochial and so on.

The views of Rushdie and Amit Chaudhuri expressed through their books The Vintage Book of Indian Writing and The Picador Book of Modern Indian Literature respectively essentialise this battle.

Rushdie‘s statement in his book – “the ironic proposition that India’s best writing since independence may have been done in the language of the departed imperialists is simply too much for some folks to bear” – created a lot of resentment among many writers, including writers in English. In his book, Amit Chaudhuri questions – “Can it be true that Indian writing, that endlessly rich, complex and problematic entity, is to be represented by a handful of writers who write in English, who live in England or America and whom one might have met at a party?”

Chaudhuri feels that after Rushdie, IWE started employing magical realism, bagginess, non-linear narrative and hybrid language to sustain themes seen as microcosms of India and supposedly reflecting Indian conditions. He contrasts this with the works of earlier writers such as Narayan where the use of English is pure, but the deciphering of meaning needs cultural familiarity. He also feels that Indianness is a theme constructed only in IWE and does not articulate itself in the vernacular literatures. (It is probable that the level of Indianness constructed is directly proportional to the distance between the writer and India.) He further adds “the post-colonial novel, becomes a trope for an ideal hybridity by which the West celebrates not so much Indianness, whatever that infinitely complex thing is, but its own historical quest, its reinterpretation of itself”.

Some of these arguments form an integral part of what is called postcolonial theory. The very categorisation of IWE – as IWE or under post-colonial literature – is seen by some as limiting. Amitav Ghosh made his views on this very clear by refusing to accept the Eurasian Commonwealth Writers Prize for his book The Glass Palace in 2001 and withdrawing it from the subsequent stage.

The renowned writer V. S. Naipaul, a third generation Indian from Trinidad and Tobago and a Nobel prize laureate, is a person who belongs to the world and usually not classified under IWE. Naipaul evokes ideas of homeland, rootlessness and his own personal feelings towards India in many of his books.

Recent writers in India such as Arundhati Roy and David Davidar show a direction towards contextuality and rootedness in their works. Arundhati Roy, a trained architect and the 1997 Booker prize winner for her The God of Small Things, calls herself a “home grown” writer. Her award winning book is set in the immensely physical landscape of Kerala. Davidar sets his The House of Blue Mangoes in Southern Tamil Nadu. In both the books, geography and politics are integral to the narrative. In his novel Lament of Mohini [1] (2000), Shreekumar Varma[2] touches upon the unique matriarchal system and the sammandham system of marriage as he writes about the Namboodiris and the aristocrats of Kerala.

As the number of Indian writers in English keeps increasing, with everyone with a story to tell trying to tell a story, and as publishing houses in India vie among themselves to discover the next new whiz-kid who will land up with world fame, it could become increasingly difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff. Research, debates and seminars on IWE continue with increasing frequency. However,it might be too early a stage in the history of Indian writing in English to pass any final judgement.

In modern times, Indian poetry in English was typified by two very different poets. Dom Moraes, winner of the Hawthornden Prize at the precocious age of 19 for his first book of poems “A Beginning” went on to occupy a pre-eminent position among Indian poets writing in English. Nissim Ezekiel, who came from India’s tiny Bene Israel Jewish community, created a voice and place for Indian poets writing in English and championed their work.

Indo-Nostalgic writing is a somewhat loosely defined term encompassing writings, in the English language, wherein nostalgia regarding the Indian subcontinent, typically regarding India, represent a dominant theme or strong undercurrent. The writings may be memoirs, or quasi-fictionalized memoirs, travelogues, or inspired in part by real-life experiences and in part by the writer’s imagination. This would include both mass-distributed “Indo-Anglian” literature put out by major publishing houses and also much shorter articles (e.g. feature pieces in mainstream or literary magazines) or poetry, including material published initially or solely in webzines.

Certainly, Indo-Nostalgic writings have much overlap with post-colonial literature but are generally not about ‘heavy’ topics such as cultural identity, conflicted identities, multilingualism or rootlessness. The writings are often less self-conscious and more light-hearted, perhaps dealing with impressionistic memories of places, people, cuisines, Only-in-India situations, or simply vignettes of “the way things were”. Of late, a few Indo-nostalgic writers are beginning to show signs of “long-distance nationalism”, concomitant with the rise of nationalism within India against the backdrop of a booming economy.

In addition to focusing on nationalism or any universal themes, many writers emerged out with innovative ideas and techniques in writing poetry. It is a pity that there are many writers whose writings still remain unnoticed either due to lack of source to get their works recoganised or less oppurtunities does not knock the doors of the right person. Writers like Krishna Srinivas, M.K.Gopinathan, etc have contributed enormous poetry collection to the growth of Indian English Literature. Krishna Srinivas concentrated on all sorts of social aspects in his poetry, and M.K.Gopinathan poetic mission is to spread peace in the minds of the readers. M.K.Gopinathan’s anthologies includes, “I go on for ever”, “A Fresh Rose” and “It is not my fault” which contained interesting subjects of day to day life.

Typically, the authors are either Western-based writers of Indian origin (e.g. Salman Rushdie, Rohinton Mistry), or Western writers who have spent long periods of time in the subcontinent, possibly having been born or raised in India, perhaps as the children of British Raj-era European expatriates or missionaries (e.g. Jim Corbett, Stephen Alter). Or, they may even be Anglo-Indians who have emigrated from the subcontinent to the West. Third Culture Kids (TCKs) often grow up to produce Indo-Nostalgic writings that exhibit palpably deep (and perhaps somewhat romanticized) feelings for their childhoods in the subcontinent. Accordingly, another common theme in Indo-Nostalgic writing is “rediscovery” or its cousin, “reconnection”.

Of course, for mass-distributed authors, Indo-Nostalgic writings may not necessarily represent all of their literary output, but certainly would represent a high percentage; it is their sweet spot, after all. Finally, it is worth noting that the markets for such writers are almost entirely in the West; despite the rapid growth in the incomes of urban Indians, the sales of English-language literature within India (other than books required for educational degrees or professional purposes) are minuscule compared to sales in the West, even if one includes pirated copies.

King, Bruce Alvin. Modern Indian Poetry in English: Revised Edition. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1987, rev. 2001. (“the standard work on the subject and unlikely to be surpassed” — Mehrotra, 2003).